Sue Hartigan <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Special prosecutor Kenneth Starr paid a rare visit Tuesday to the U.S. courthouse where grand jurors are investigating alleged White House sex and perjury. Starr spent about 15 minutes in the courthouse, much of it behind the barriers that keep the grand jury proceedings secret. Starr's office had no comment on the courthouse visit. It was Starr's third meeting since January with the panel that has been considering allegations that President Clinton had a sexual affair with ex-White House intern Monica Lewinsky and then tried to cover it up. Clinton has denied the allegations. Earlier Tuesday, the grand jury heard from Nancy Hernreich, director of Oval Office operations, in her sixth appearance before the panel. Hernreich was expected to be questioned about more than three dozen visits Lewinsky made to the president's working quarters in the White House between early 1996 and late 1997. Hernreich left the courthouse after about an hour; her lawyer indicated she would be called back again. As Hernreich testified in Washington, a separate Starr grand jury in Little Rock, Ark., was investigating the personal and political finances of Clinton and his wife, Hillary Rodham Clinton. There was speculation that the Little Rock panel would see videotaped testimony Mrs. Clinton gave Starr and his team during a five-hour interview at the White House Saturday. The grand jury could see those tapes as early as Wednesday. One of the focuses of this phase of Starr's investigation is whether the first lady lied about the extent of her legal work more than a decade ago for a failed Arkansas thrift and a real estate project it underwrote known as Castle Grande. She told federal regulators under oath that she did limited legal work for Madison Savings and Loan and little or no work for Castle Grande. She told Starr's prosecutors the same thing at a White House deposition in July 1995 and is believed to have given similar testimony to a Whitewater grand jury in Washington six months later. Mrs. Clinton's activities while a partner for the Rose Law Firm in Little Rock have come under scrutiny because the thrift collapsed under the weight of bad loans, leaving taxpayers a $60 million bill for bailing out depositors. Adding to Clinton's headaches was a New York Post column by Dick Morris, who resigned in disgrace as the president's chief re-election strategist in August 1996 after a supermarket tabloid exposed Morris' affair with a prostitute. Under the headline "Clinton's Secret Police in Overdrive," Morris said Secret Service entry logs showed that Betsy Wright, a longtime Clinton damage-control specialist, held three White House meetings with Craig Livingstone in October 1993. Livingstone is the former White House aide who improperly obtained FBI background files on hundreds of people who worked for Republican Presidents Ronald Reagan and George Bush. Morris said the timing of the meetings was curious because they occurred after the White House discovered that Jim Guy Tucker, Clinton's successor as Arkansas governor, was about to become the target of a Whitewater-related investigation. The Clinton political adviser-turned-columnist suggests that Wright and Livingstone might have met to try to cover up evidence in the Tucker probe that could damage the president. On Capitol Hill, House Speaker Newt Gingrich, a Georgia Republican who has been sharply critical of Clinton's conduct during the scandal investigation, clashed with Democrats over whether four witnesses should have immunity to testify before a congressional panel investigating Clinton's campaign finances. "The Democrats' efforts to block immunity ... cannot withstand the public's demand for the truth," Gingrich said in a letter to Rep. Dan Burton, the Republican chairman of the House Government Reform and Oversight Committee. Rep. Henry Waxman of California, ranking Democrat on the committee, said Burton's probe was "a government-funded Republican campaign to smear Democrats." -- Two rules in life: 1. Don't tell people everything you know. 2. Subscribe/Unsubscribe, email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] In the body of the message enter: subscribe/unsubscribe law-issues
